


looking so long at these pictures of you

by havisham



Series: havisham's SASO 2017 works collection [65]
Category: Free!
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 16:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11718165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: I've been living so long with my pictures of youThat I almost believe that the picturesAre all I can feelSousuke and the careful making and preservation of memories.





	looking so long at these pictures of you

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017, Bonus Round Five: Clue, for the prompt: yamazaki sousuke/matsuoka rin, sousuke in his room with the photo of him and rin.

Perhaps surprisingly, Sousuke didn't have that many pictures of himself and Rin. As kids, neither of them had been fond of having their pictures taken -- those thirty seconds of stillness felt unbearable, an eternity -- and that impatience only grew when they were around each other. 

So, Sousuke only had a few pictures to look through now. There were some school photos, group shots of them at their swimming club. There was one taken on their first day of third grade, arms slung around each other. Sousuke looking suspiciously at the camera while Rin grinned widely, one of his front teeth missing. 

There was another one, taken on Rin’s father’s fishing boat. Sousuke and Rin peeked over the railing to Rin’s mother, who had taken the photo from the pier. They were both standing on boxes -- they were too small to see over the railings otherwise -- and Rin’s father loomed over them, his hands resting on the tops of both of their heads. The picture cut off before it reached his face, but Sousuke didn’t need that to remember him. Rin’s father was very much like Rin himself. They had the same brightness and vivacity, the same playful bite of a smile. 

Sousuke missed Rin like a part of himself that was gone, his heart or something just as vital. He would look at those faded photographs and wonder what had happened, how he was the only one who remembered and felt this loss. 

*

“Oi, Sousuke, photo, photo! Come on, don’t move so slowly!” 

Sousuke stretched out and yawned hugely, ignoring Rin’s frantic attempts to get his attention. They would be graduating in less than three weeks now, and his head was jumbled with various things he still needed to do before that time. Taking selfies with Rin was so not in the plans. 

With a frustrated sigh, Rin launched himself into the lower bunk, where Sousuke was lying down. After regionals, he’d ceded the space to Sousuke but sometimes he forgot that he’d done so, like now, when he grabbed Sousuke by the collar and shook him. 

“I want to take a picture of you, you asshole.” 

“Why?” Sousuke said with a snicker. “To preserve a little of our precious youth? I didn’t know you were so sentimental, Rin.” 

“I’m not! I just --” Rin looked down, a faint flush on his cheeks. “It’s not like we have a lot of pictures together, you know?” 

Sousuke groaned. That had done the trick -- of course, he would let Rin take as many pictures as he pleased.

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't as sad as something titled from a lyric from the Cure could've been, was it?


End file.
